Engaging Multiple Literate Practices through Identity Composition.” L2
Identity in the Twenty-First Century. Retrieved from Blackboard. Web. 24 Sep.
2010.
In “Social Networking in a Second Language: Engaging Multiple Literate Practices through Identity Composition,” DePew and Miller-Cochran discuss how “social networking sites offer a unique window into the emerging multiliteracies of L2 writers, especially the ways in which these writers compose their identities through multiple literate practices” and argue “that L2 students’ Web 2.0 texts can serve as a useful medium for understanding the ways in which they compose their identities and the complex literate practices they are developing while doing so” (274). DePew and Miller-Cochran conduct a study in order to find out more about “how L2 student writers are actually using Web 2.0 programs to compose their identities” and to determine if there is a “reciprocal relationship between the identity composing strategies they use for the writing done in these online social contexts and writing done for other contexts, such as the academy” (277). In addition, they were interested in how audiences were responding to the L2 writers’ online texts (Depew and Miller-Cochran 277). With DeWitt’s case studies serving as a model, DePew and Miller-Cochran asked three L2 students “for a guided tour through the Web 2.0 texts that they had composed” (278). They also inquired about “choices to include certain features (e.g. pictures, videos, widgets) to get a sense of how the participants saw these features influencing how others perceived them” (DePew and Miller-Cochran 278).
I would recommend this article to my peers or scholars in the field because DePew and Miller-Cochran do a good job articulating the possible influence of L2 students’ Web 2.0 writing in the academy as well as how academic writing might affect the way they compose online. DePew and Miller-Cochran point out that Web 2.0 writing may not be valued in academic institutions and note in the conclusion that “although [the] three participants [in the study] do not perceive that their social networking literacy practices affect how they write for academic institutions and vice versa, [DePew and Miller-Cochran] believe that further examination… might still present important implications for other writing contexts” (290). Because digital writing is quickly becoming the norm and the relationship between writing on social networking sites like Facebook and academic writing has not been thoroughly explored, DePew and Miller-Cochran’s article stays relevant. Many of the questions they pose in their article’s conclusion remain unanswered, and as digital spaces evolve, this will only augment the questions in the field. DePew and Miller-Cochran’s three case studies “provide rich data regarding how the participants represent themselves visually, textually, and aurally in each space and how they are represented by (and their identities are likewise influenced by) others” (289). The technological advances of today will be obsolete before tomorrow; thus, it is imperative for writing researchers, digital writing researchers, and L2 writing researchers to continue to investigate a variety of digitally social contexts that impact L2 writers’ identity construction, literacy practices, and discursive activities.
